Sunday's 5-0 victory over Bristol City featured two very special - and emotional - moments late on in the game.
First up, Laura Wienroither returned to action for the first time since suffering an ACL injury against Wolfsburg in May 2023, before 17-year-old Katie Reid was also introduced off the bench to make her first senior Arsenal appearance.
"It’s very well deserved for Katie," said Jonas Eidevall in his post-match interview.
"It’s not me trying to be nice, it’s her deserving the playing time. We’ve seen Katie since she’s stepped up to the first team for the first time, she’s an eager learner, she’s a competitor and I think she has an Arsenal DNA in the way she plays. She’s aggressive in defence, but she’s so calm and composed on the ball and really expresses herself through that.
When you see a young player stepping into a first team environment, what you really hope is to say like let’s stay authentic to the player that you are and let the occasion get the best out of you. I think she should be really proud of her performance because I think she really got to display the player that she is to the rest of the league and that’s always very nice to see."
Eidevall then went on to sing the praises of Wienroither for her outstanding attitude and professionalism throughout her road to recovery.
"Everyone knows that Laura is a 100 per cent kind of person," said Eidevall. "She brings her best every day even in tough times when she’s injured, sometimes it might be easy to only focus on yourself, but never Laura. She’s always about the team, she’s always bringing out the best to the team and I think that’s what you can see from the appreciation that she gets when she’s coming on as well.
"She’s a magnificent team player, a really hard working individual throughout her rehab and it’s really nice for her to be able to return to play."
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
